


Victorian Indiscretions

by TrakeniteTourist (auronlu)



Category: Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Alternate Scene, Demisexuality, F/M, First Time, Gap Filler, Gratuitous Venusian Lullaby Alert, WAFF, extreme fluff warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 03:49:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8695276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auronlu/pseuds/TrakeniteTourist
Summary: An alternate scene for The Haunting of Thomas Brewster, one of many audios in which the fifth Doctor lost Nyssa and was very glad to find her. Suppose they had at least one night to become reacquainted before the plot carried her off again? Because canon just can't do happy reunions like fanfic can.





	

**Author's Note:**

> (There's enough context within this fic that you don't need to have heard the audio that inspired it. And no, it doesn't belong with any other fic I've written, because I usually imagine the Doctor falling for a friend much later in the BFA timeline.)

The door closed behind the Doctor with a click. Nyssa stood alone in his cramped study, surrounded by books, papers, regrettable furniture, and vintage gadgets that would have been charmingly quaint were they not a depressing reminder of the primitive world in which the two travelers were stranded.

“‘Genius at work.’” She snorted. “How he ever finds anything…” Wrinkling her nose at the general disorder of the room, she proceeded to the shabby police box standing in the corner. It almost matched its surroundings, for once: one more piece of bric-a-brac in the eccentric scientist’s collection. She greeted the ship gladly. Behind the nondescript exterior lay a technological palace which, for all its quirks, made for a very comfortable dwelling.

Unless it malfunctioned. Traversing the interface between the real world and the ship’s interior dimensions was always disconcerting, but tonight she felt a powerful wave of vertigo as she crossed the threshold. The console room was almost as much of a shock. It was cold, deathly quiet, and so dark that it took some while for her eyes to adjust enough to see the dim amber glow emanating from a few scattered roundels. Evidently the Doctor’s best efforts over the past year had not yet restored the ailing ship’s power systems.

Almost she turned around. The couch in the study was hardly the worst accommodation she had encountered on their journeys, after all. But she had little enthusiasm for the suffocating miasma of dust, coal soot and paraffin smoke that permeated all but the draftiest Victorian homes. After just one day in London’s soiled air, she yearned for a hot shower or at least a clean nightgown. The air in the TARDIS was freezing, but it was fresh. She could borrow blankets from Tegan’s old room.

"Now where is that torch?" She circled to the left of the console and made for the coat rack. Which must have been moved at some point, but eventually she found the correct roundel. It popped open under her fingertips.

Empty. Of course it was. She felt around in the shallow cavity just to make sure.

Hopefully he hadn’t left it out for Robert to find. With a shrug, she moved to the inner door. It might be a full year for the Doctor since she had left the TARDIS so precipitously, but for her only a few hours had elapsed. She knew the way.

Correction: she _had_ known the way. Her room should lie halfway down the right-hand wall. Nevertheless, she groped all the way to the first intersection without finding the handle. And where had Tegan’s room got to? Was the internal architecture malfunctioning, or had she simply blundered past them in the dark?Retracing her steps to the console room, she tried again, counting roundels with chilled fingers. A third try yielded no further results. She was about to abandon the search when she spied a tenuous amber light glimmering under a door panel. Had she somehow got turned around in the dark? Weary and warily, she hurried towards it.

* * *

 Forty minutes and two cups of tea later, the Doctor suddenly remembered that he had left the TARDIS in power conservation mode. He was surprised that Nyssa had not come down to scold him. But then, she was one of his more pragmatic companions. She had probably made do with the couch.

All in all, it had been a good day’s work. Robert had located a new source of tungsten, his lecture to the Royal Society had been quite well-received, and his wayward companion had returned from the time vortex none the worse for wear. Now that she was verifiably out of danger, he should find it easier to focus his mind on other problems. There were TARDIS repairs to consider, first of all: most of the work was done, but the remainder would take no time at all with an assistant who needed no cover stories and could work unsupervised. Meanwhile, he and his Watson could pursue the curious string of thefts which suggested other alien visitors in the city. Also, assuming Nyssa did not want to quit Earth as soon as possible, he needed to distill Hiraga Gennai’s work on static electricity down to a paper for his next presentation. Despite her incredulity, he rather enjoyed being a pillar of society from time to time.

He set down his teacup. Surely Nyssa was asleep by now. Yet after all these months of waiting for her to materialise, he could not silence the irrational voice in the back of his mind nagging him to check on her. Annoyed with himself, he drew out the folder of newspaper clippings and spread them across the kitchen table. He spent another ten minutes occupied less with analysis and deduction than with the agreeable memory of Nyssa’s flustered entrance into Burlington House earlier that afternoon.

It was no use, tea or no tea. Concentration was eluding him. He picked up the table lamp and headed for the stairs.

He found the study unoccupied. The Doctor started towards the window, prompted by a wild fancy that something or someone might have abducted her that way. Then, to his relief, he saw the TARDIS door had not been properly shut. He would have to remind Nyssa to fortify it against human curiosity until and unless they decided to take Robert into their confidence. Which was a dilemma he could not put off much longer. But for tonight, at least, he was concerned with his old assistant rather than the new.

“Ugh,” he said, staggering through the TARDIS doors. He really ought to do something about the misaligned interface stabiliser. Inside, the console room was a cold and dismal place, illuminated only by a reddish-orange glow like his native sky. Could Nyssa see in Gallifreyan emergency lighting? Her range of vision differed slightly from that of humans, but he couldn’t remember whether the Trakenite visible spectrum extended past red or violet. He made a mental note to ask her later.

Outside her door, he stopped with his fingers on the handle. Should he knock first? No, she needed rest. As quietly as possible, he opened the door a crack and peered inside.

There was no sign of her.

Anxiety began to gnaw again as he played the light of the oil lamp around her small, neat room. Her peacock chair, her art nouveau desk lamp, even the Cranleigh butterfly costume were approximately where they should be, talismans to summon their absent owner. Nyssa, however, was nowhere to be seen. He could hear nothing from the adjoining washroom.

The Doctor quashed a wave of rising panic. There was no reason to think the time breach had drawn her back into itself like a wave reclaiming a shell it had deposited on the sand.

“Nyssa?” he called. His voice echoed loudly. “Nyssa! _Nyssa!_ ”

Just as he was about to return to the house for an attic-to-cellar sweep, enlisting Robert’s help to search the TARDIS if necessary, he heard a muffled sound some distance off. He exited at once, casting around for a moment before sprinting down the hall to his own room.

Flinging the door open, he was relieved and chagrinned to see a small form ensconced, snail-like, under a mound of sheets. Nyssa peeped out at him from his four-poster bed, blinking owlishly in the light of the lantern.

“What are you doing in here?” he said severely, setting the lamp on the floor. A homey yellow light reflected off the ceiling.

Her brow furrowed with annoyance. “I got lost,” she admitted. “I think the TARDIS misplaced my room again.”

“Preposterous,” he said, uncomfortably aware that he had been a little hazy when rebooting the internal architecture. “If you were having difficulty, you should have come downstairs to get me.”

That drew a snort. “But if I’d known the way out, then I wouldn’t have needed to come get you. Tegan warned me what happens when you lose your bearings. I didn’t fancy wandering around the corridors all night looking for the exit.” She yawned and pulled the covers tighter around herself. “At any rate, if you’ll fetch a torch and show me to my room, I’ll be happy to clear out.”

The Doctor frowned. He could restart the environmental controls, but the process would take some time. It seemed unkind to make her seek another cold bed. “There’s no need, if you’re comfortable here. Go back to sleep.”

“A torch?” she persisted. There was an odd quaver in her voice.

“Yes. Yes, of course.” Mildly distracted by her presence in his inner sanctum, he fumbled through several drawers, found a hand-light and set the small globe on the nightstand. Something in the way her wide eyes tracked his every move made him potter around the room rather longer than necessary. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I… I don’t know.” She sighed. “That strange woman’s song keeps playing over and over in my mind. It’s just a children’s rhyme, isn’t it? I can’t seem to dislodge it.”

“Hmm.” If the creature had established some sort of mental connection…“That does sound disagreeable. Half a moment.” He reached under the bed-skirts for a wheeled cedar chest and drew out a duvet. “Here. You’ll sleep better snug, I should think. May I bring you anything else? Tea, perhaps?” He tossed the eiderdown over her with a flourish, hiding his worry. “The sound system is offline, or I’d suggest driving out one tune with another. But you probably don’t want to hear me sing.”

She chuckled faintly. “Oh, I don’t know. You’ve never exhibited that particular talent for me to judge.”

“Really?” It was probably a simple earworm, but there was no harm in shoring up her psychic defenses. “Well, then. Permit me to redress that oversight.” Feeling rather self-conscious, he leaned across the headboard and began to chant a sonorous tune that sounded strange in a younger man’s voice. “ _Klokeda partha mennin klatch_ —”

Picking up something in his manner, she extended a hand towards him. The gesture was impossible to ignore after a year of his own private nightmares, which frequently involved her being sucked out the TARDIS doors into the vortex. He reached down and laid his hand over hers, repeating the mantra until her breathing began to slow and deepen. _“Haroun, haroun, haroun…”_

He thought she had dropped off. Then she said, “I don’t think I’ve met a species with three eyes yet in our travels.”

Apparently the TARDIS translation circuits were still operational. He blushed, although the “darling” in the song was obviously metaphorical. “It’s a Venusian lullaby.”

“Venus? But I thought Earth and Mars were the only inhabited planets in the Sol system.”

“Nowadays, yes. Now shush. You were supposed to be going to sleep.”

“Oh, yes.” She closed her eyes and stretched out under the duvet. “I was enjoying your voice. No one’s sung to me in quite a while.”

There was nothing he could say to that.

“Thank you,” she added. “And now you ought to be getting back to your deductions.”

“I suppose so,” he said. “Or perhaps I could continue my deducing here, if you won’t be put off by someone in the same room.”

“Not you.” She squeezed his hand lightly. “You were afraid I wouldn’t come back, weren’t you?”

“Yes.” The blunt yet gentle question caught him off-guard, and he answered honestly. “But I was fairly confident the temporal breach was a conduit leading somewhere. The tricky part was calculating its endpoint at the same time that I was performing an emergency materialisation.” In fact, he had only been able to detect the time corridor with his makeshift interferometer a few weeks ago. Until then, all he had to go on was a hunch based on the ghostly woman’s nursery rhyme. “Your assistance was sorely missed.”

“Oh, _Doctor_.”

She knew. He would never admit it, but she had guessed all the same: the agonising wait that had stretched into lonely months. Her absence had coloured all his efforts to build a new life in a backwards century with a crippled ship and no UNIT to supply him with equipment. For almost a year, he had feared Nyssa might be worse than dead, smeared from one end to the other of the space-time continuum. Yes, he had missed her, but that was profound understatement. He had been forced to face just how deeply he cared for her. It was not the first time he had become so attached to a traveling companion, but usually he had been able to fend off awkward truths with the frenetic everyday business of saving planets and staying alive.

She shifted slightly, relinquishing his hand and withdrawing to one side of the bed. He would have taken it for a dismissal, but she had opened one eye and given him a pointed look, a wistful little smile playing across her lips. He had seen that expression before. Usually, he had been too busy to take heed.

Deductions snapped into place. Instincts concurred emphatically. The only question was what course to take.

The faint hiss of the oil lamp measured the seconds until he came quietly around the headboard and sat down on the side of the bed. She lifted the edge of the covers at once. He was scandalised yet not entirely surprised to find she had changed into his dressing-gown when she could not find her own. Taking off his shoes, cravat and waistcoat, still decently clothed in two layers of Victorian propriety, he secured a pillow and lay down beside her. She nestled down against his chest, making no objection when he wrapped his arms around her. Whatever malevolent entity had spirited her away from the TARDIS before his eyes, they would not touch her tonight.

Nyssa nosed his whiskers aside and brushed her lips against his cheek. His skin still tingled long after she drifted off.

* * *

 The oil lamp burned low. Some hours later, the Doctor awoke to find his fingers threaded through her curls and their legs twined immodestly. He ought to move at once, before she awoke. But how to disentangle himself without rousing her?

She let out a murmuring gasp and clenched her legs around his thigh. If he had any doubts at all, the slight movements of her hips made the substance of her dream quite clear. He had only a bare moment to register the extraordinary sensation that rolled over him from head to toe before the need to shift positions grew suddenly imperative. Loosening his grip on her hair, he patted her head awkwardly.

“Erm… Nyssa?”

“Mmmmmm.” She sighed and kissed his neck. “That was wonderful, Doctor.”

He froze. That did not alleviate his condition at all. “You were dreaming,” he stammered.

“Oh, were we?” She sounded muzzily disappointed. “That’s a pity.”

“I know,” he blurted out, with so much sincerity that he surprised himself.

She stirred, shifted restlessly against him, and went still.

He lay curled around her in the shadows, hearts hammering, praying that she would have forgotten his indiscreet comment by morning. Not that he would be able to forget hers.

Languid but perfectly lucid, she spoke into his shoulder. “It doesn’t have to be just a dream.”

It didn’t.

But he shouldn’t.

The thought had crossed his mind before, but until now he had always successfully managed to shove inappropriate thoughts aside.

Like he was shoving aside the dressing gown, sliding his hand under luxurious satin to feel the warm curve of her hip.

Her exquisite sigh melted his rapidly crumbling willpower.

He scooted down the bed to find her forehead, her nose, stumbling kisses finally homing in on her lips. She met his mouth with sleepy passion. And, after a sweet breathless interlude, tongue. His hands closed convulsively over her shoulders. His head swam. Was he absolutely sure they weren’t dreaming?

Caresses became more heated in the near-darkness. They cuddled for a long time through too many layers. Finally he settled over her,braced on hands and knees to giveher access to suspenders and shirt buttons and undershirt, each one its own separate adventure of exploration, trial and error as she sought to disrobe him while stealing as many kisses and as much physical contact as possible. Straitlaced Doctor Walters was tossed away like last year’s frock-coat. He shuddered as her curious fingers explored his bare chest and stomach. His own nibbling forays were more circumspect, constrained by the need to hold himself up without crushing her, and by his own warring desires and gentleman’s scruples. The latter were severely compromised by her three or four inches of exposed skin gleaming from neck to thigh where his dressing gown had loosened around her.

They were rapidly reaching a point of no return. Had passed it, in fact. But he pulled away, arms beginning to tremble, when her clever fingers slipped under his waistband. She halted at once, looking up at him with flushed cheeks and lips parted in a mute question that addled his brain too much for any coherent answer.

“Nyssa,” he mumbled. “If this changes anything between us—”

“Too late,” she said, practical as ever. “If you didn’t want change, you should have stayed in stasis on Gallifrey.”

He was fairly certain that was an unwarranted extrapolation, but he was in no condition to debate her logic. Whatever response he might have mustered was stoppered when she rose up and kissed him deeply. He collapsed onto his elbows, trying not to smother her, his answer distressingly obvious where their lower bodies pressed together. During a brief tender interlude which was no respite whatsoever, she mapped out the muscles of his arms and shoulders with the edges of her fingernails, eventually burrowing her hands down between their bodies with an impatient shove.

He retrieved his tongue and rolled off of her, feeling her shiver from the inrush of cold air. His hands were unsteady as he turned away and sat up to remove his socks while she unbuttoned his trousers. She breathed in what he hoped was noisy approval as he stood, peeled off the last few scraps of clothing, and then lay down beside her again. She was luminous in the weak lamplight. For a while he stifled primal urges and devoted himself to stroking and kissing her wide awake, until her toes were curling under his mouth’s ministrations and she was tugging his hair with a whimpering demand. He moved back up her body, no longer shy about full physical contact, drew the sheets back over them and took her face gently between his hands for a grave, lingering kiss.

Her breaths were coming quick and fast. Those astonishing gray-green eyes held his with such shining trust that he found it difficult to meet them. He tried to be worthy of her, of all of them, but he could never live up to Nyssa’s high regard, which never seemed to diminish no matter how often she tripped over his feet of clay.

A Time Lord was only a man, after all. And just now it was the ordinary man she clearly needed.

She helped guide him as he settled over her on one elbow. A tremulous finger laid against his cheek both assured and terrified him that she wanted this. He watched the way she bit her lip as he pushed in carefully, well aware of her inexperience. The tears welling up in her eyes made him freeze, but she shook her head impatiently and pulsed her hips, wrenching an involuntary groan from him. They moved together then, slow and uncertain at first, growing bolder by degrees until experimentation hit upon a joyful rolling rhythm. English had too many vulgar words for this sort of thing, but at least humans had hit upon one adequate expression. The Doctor made love to her. Nyssa opened to him with loving sweetness that radiated from her skin as palpably as heat. When she danced beneath him, giving herself over to the pleasure he was only too glad to offer and receive, time wheeled around them.

Thrust and rebound. The fevent clutch of her hands cupping his ribcage. Sweat in his eyes. Her heels jammed into his calves, tightening as she began to tremble. His skin on fire, warmed by friction and her delicious body heat. Her hair tickling his throat as she turned her head to gasp for breath. Soft trembling spasms that undid his last vestiges of control, rousing him to a plunging crescendo. Thank goodness there was no one else in the TARDIS tonight, since neither of them could keep quiet as first one and then the other stiffened and arched into a shuddering release. The Doctor fell heavily onto his side. They clung to one another for several minutes before gulping breaths gave way to embarrassed laughter and sentimental caresses.

He might have spent the rest of the night trading affectionate kisses, but her movements were growing sluggish, for all that she made a sleepy protest when he pulled away. Smiling, he turned her around and drew her close again, spooning with his whiskers tickling her ear. She swatted him playfully, then wriggled against him with a contented sigh and folded her hands across his over her breasts.

Travelers at rest. Tomorrow they would no doubt be off on another adventure, because he had yet to spend a single uneventful twenty-four hours with her. But for now, time stood still.

There was a subtle rushing noise in his ears, and the lantern’s flame guttered in its chimney.

“Hello, old girl,” he murmured.

Nyssa stirred at that. “Did you just call me—?”

He laughed softly behind her. “No. It seems the power cells have finished regenerating a few days early. The environmental systems just kicked on.” There was a faint flicker, and the dim amber roundels took on a soft blue-violet hue. “And, I think, the lights. It seems the TARDIS was waiting for you too.”

“Thanks.” Nyssa touched the wall, whispering as she nodded off again, “It’s good to be—” and that slight pause gave weight to a simple word— “home.”


End file.
